10 Favorite Photographs: Fabian Schreyer

German photographer, journalist, PR agent in the music industry. Lives in Augsburg, Germany. Co-founded The Street Collective. Curates Via!, a German–Italian street photography project. Published his works in LensCulture, The Huffington Post, Fotoforum, Photonews, Giornale di Sicilia and many other outlets.

July, 2014. Barcelona/Spain.
One day in Barcelona I was walking down La Rambla Boulevard towards the sea and crossed the wooden bridge that leads to Maremagnum, a huge floating shopping mall. On the planks I saw a man sunbathing. The way he had perfectly arranged his socks for drying caught my interest and I tried to work the situation by adding further elements to the scene that could improve the frame. Although there is still a lot of blank space in the center of the frame now, I felt quite lucky to spot those two pigeons in the top left corner, who were the missing third pair in this composition.

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May, 2012. New York/U.S.
On that rainy day in Manhattan I first bought an umbrella — an accessory I didn’t think I would need for some reason, when I packed my suitcase for a ten day photography trip to New York. I was walking up and down 5th Avenue, surely one of the best spots for street photography. At an intersection the red traffic light made me stop. Suddenly one of those yellow school buses drove around the corner and slowed down. The kids were staring out of the window making fun of the people outside. I took several shots of this scene, but this one with the two matching hands and the slightly blurred view is still my favourite frame.

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July, 2014. Barcelona/Spain.
Again Barcelona, a very warm day in July. After wandering the city center for hours, I needed a coffee break. I sat down in one of the little cafés in Barri Gòtic, close to the harbor, to sip an espresso and started observing this Spanish couple at the next table for a few minutes. Suddenly the guy’s phone rang. He jumped up answering the call and left the café. In his hurry, he forgot to say goodbye to the woman. Instead of coming back into the bar, he preferred the short way through the window to give her a goodbye kiss. Luckily I had placed my camera next to my coffee cup, so I was prepared to capture this fleeting moment.

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December, 2015. Key West/U.S.
The Street Collective had been invited to be a featured collective at the Miami Street Photography Festival 2015 (MSPF), which takes place during Art Basel Miami. Together with some friends we used this travel from Europe to Florida for a short trip down to the Keys. In Key West, close to the place where people gather to observe the sunset, I spotted a couple of those characteristic colorful roosters that you’ll find plenty of in this southernmost point in the U.S. In this frame I loved how the rooster was highlighted with the last rays of sunlight and how his excitement contrasts with the sleeping man.

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February, 2015. Berlin/Germany.
On a cold February day in Berlin, in Mitte, I passed a shop selling masks for all different kinds of occasions. An elderly woman entered the shop with a kid and the boy started trying some of the masks on for fun. After a while the lady, probably his grandmother, engaged in his play, took an alligator mask from the wall, covered her face and checked out her new look in the mirror.

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July, 2016. Rosignano Marittimo/Italy.
This July I stayed for a couple of days in Rosignano Marittimo in Tuscany, to attend the opening night of my Via! exhibition in a nearby chapel in Livorno. On one of the days before the show, a friend from Cecina showed me around. One of the places we visited was Spiagge Bianche, a long sandy beach in Rosignano Solvay. Due to the influence of a nearby calcium carbonate factory, the white sand and the clear water make you feel like you’re in the Caribbean.

We walked along the waterfront and I observed a guy for a while who sold inflatable penguins. Every once in awhile he picked up a penguin, threw it up in the air and waited until the waves washed them back ashore. For a second, it looked like two of the penguins were crossing the ocean to meet their fellows.

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August, 2013. Rome/Italy.
While I was walking the small side streets in the center of Rome, I faced a situation which still moves me till today. It is one of the pictures which is of major importance to me when it comes to working out my personal ethical borders in street photography. I struggled a lot taking this shot, as I usually tend to not pick homeless people as subjects of my photographs. But in this case I had to take the shot, the moment was too interesting, the frame too storytelling.

It’s a kind of a heartbreaking love story that laces up one’s shoes and leaves so much room for interpretation. I don’t know this guy, but he has a place in my heart forever.

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September, 2015. Augsburg/Germany.
I have no soft spot for horses and anything attached to horseback riding whatsoever. But when the Americana, Europe’s biggest fair for western riding, came to my hometown, I thought it might be worthwhile to use the opportunity and attend the event to take pictures.

In the outdoor area between the different fair halls they had built a saloon and a western bar. Through the bar window I observed the visitors inside. Many of them were dressed up as cowboys and corresponded to the framed pictures on the wall. It was a quite static scene, which offered me the possibility to wait for awhile to add another layer to the composition. Soon after, this young couple showed up and took care of the foreground-action.

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August, 2016. Pisa/Italy.
This is probably not one of my best shots, but a recent one, which illustrates the growth of our device-driven society. Pisa is indisputably one of the best locations to experience the full frenzy, with thousands of Asian tourists trying to straighten the leaning tower and in the meantime taking pictures of themselves and their fellow travelers. As a street photographer, I feel attracted and disgusted at the same time, when I come to places like this.

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April, 2015. Venice/Italy.
For many years I try to travel to Venice once a year. I spend my days in the streets in the laguna and I know where to get both my favorite pasta and the preferred light. With the perfect afternoon sunlight in my back, I took this shot in front of a souvenir stand on Riva Degli Schiavoni, a wide waterfront promenade close to Piazza San Marco. This quite attractive lady, who was wearing two different colored high heels, immediately caught my attention. The kitchy motifs on the kitchen aprons offered the perfect backdrop. They not only provided a reference to the country of origin of the shot, but also amplified the sexual connotations of this scene.